The first communist coup d'etat, sudden and without warning, happened in April 1978 with the residents of Kabul still in their beds. Our tranquil lives ended when a friend knocked at our door before daybreak and informed us that during the night, tanks commandeered by communist officers, backed by the Soviet Union, had surrounded the Presidential palace a mile down the road from our home. After that day, peace turned into war and order became chaos.
Within half an hour, my husband and I had stashed the children and an overnight bag in our car. It was the hour before dawn as we threaded our surreptitious journey down deserted roads and across intersections guarded by tanks manned by young soldiers who watched us suspiciously. When we reached my brother-in-law's house at the other side of town, we found the family already congregated, keeping vigil next to the radio, our only means of information of what was happening outside. Our telephone lines were dead. By the end of the day, we knew that the government had changed hands; the President with his entire family had been assassinated with one cruel burst of a machine gun, giving power to a group of generals whose leader was a known informer of the KGB.
In the weeks that followed, as whispers of nails torn from fingers and electrodes inserted in genitalia in torture chambers reached our ears,
we tried to stay as invisible as possible. However, we also knew that lists of names had been drawn a long time ago and that our turn would
inevitably come when assassination squads would appear at our door. We moved out of our house into a small apartment at another part of town, since marauding communist soldiers entered houses in well-to-do neighbourhoods during curfew hours at night, plundering what was inside, killing the men, and raping women, girls, and boys. When, a month after the coup, borders opened and flights were resumed, my husband left for the United States to see if we could find refuge there in case we succeeded to escape the country.
One early morning in June, a week after my husband's departure, I was awakened from a night of fitful sleep by Kimba's cold little nose
touching my cheek. When my son's pet poodle saw me open my eyes, he, too, joined Kimba, my daughter's Lhasa Apso, by jumping on my bed to make sure that I wouldn't go back to sleep.
While I was struggling out of bed, Kimba began to run around in circles, sniffing and grunting, his stubby nose spraying
unsavoury liquids around my tiny bedroom, to demonstrate his impatience. Then he ran toward the balcony and resolutely faced its doors,
where we had spread newspapers. This was our routine every morning: just before six when the children were still asleep, Kimba and Leo would wake me up. I would let them out onto the balcony overlooking the street and crawl back to bed.
That morning, too, I padded groggily across the living room floor in my bare feet. Pushing aside the curtains, I opened the double doors
to the balcony, as the dogs rushed out with enthusiasm.
As the cool morning air hit my face and the pungent odours from the newspapers wafted to my nostrils, I became aware of movement on the
street below and found myself staring into six pairs of suspicious eyes looking up to our third-floor window. I withdrew immediately and cowered
behind the curtains. There were six soldiers standing on the opposite side of the street, looking up at me.
The soldiers who had heard the balcony doors open and could hear the dogs scuffling on the newspapers but could not see them, were
staring up, scanning the building now with much interest, their Kalashnikoffs ready, aiming at our windows, seemingly straight at me.
The dogs were still running around on the rustling newspapers and I was still peering out behind the curtains, watching the soldiers with
horror, when my children's nanny, Begoum, the only member of our staff to remain in our employ, let herself in with her key as she did every
morning a little after six. One look at her as she rushed to my side to peer through the curtains, and I knew that she, too, thought the soldiers
were there to get us. They seemed to be waiting for someone, probably their superior, since they were constantly turning their heads whenever a car would approach. Then, once again, their eyes turned back up toward our window and the balcony where the rustling of the newspapers could still be heard under Leo and Kimba's anxious little paws.
For a long time, Begoum and I stood there, transfixed, watching the soldiers who kept looking up the street, then, upwards at our
windows. There was no way out for us, no back door from which to escape the apartment. Even if there were, where would we go? My only hope was that they had come for my husband and since he was out of the country, they might leave us alone. On the other hand, what if they decided to keep us hostage to make sure of his return. Would they torture my children, would they rape me in front of them, would they . . .
Once again, Begoum and I seemed to have reached the same assumption, since I saw her look me over at the same time that I was
looking down at my flimsy nightgown and we both hurried to my closet. I rifled through my wardrobe and chose a pair of baggy trousers but could not find a shirt large enough to hide my figure. I hurried over to my husband's closet, pulled out one of his shirts and got dressed and joined Begoum at the window to see what was going on. The soldiers were still in the same position, and we resumed our vigil. The world seemed to stand still as our eyes locked onto the six figures below.
Then we heard the low rumble of a speeding car up the road. The soldiers, too, had noticed the oncoming vehicle. They suddenly came to life, jumped to the middle of the road, shouting and gesticulating wildly. The driver of the speeding taxi, a Russian Volga, with the road blocked and guns pointing at him, came to a screeching halt in a cloud of dust and debris. The soldiers surrounded the car, yelling at the driver.
Then they opened its doors and, to our amazement, piled inside and ordered the driver to drive on. As the taxi sped off and the street was empty with only the settling dust a reminder of what had just happened, we remained motionless for a few seconds, our minds numb, not comprehending this sudden turn of events. Then it dawned on us that the soldiers had not been waiting for their superior, that they had not intended to come up to our apartment to get us, and that the only reason they kept looking up at our windows, were the noises my children's dogs were making in the quiet early morning hour. Being aware of the country's animosity toward them, they must have been worried about a sniper taking aim at them while they were waiting for a taxi to take them to wherever they needed to go.
As the enormous relief flooded through our bodies, both Begoum and I burst into hysterical laughter when we looked at my shirt and realized
what I had done. From all the shirts that my husband had in his closet, in my hurry to cover myself up as much as possible, I had chosen his pink,
see-through shirt from Thailand.
Other Work By Mahbub Shansab
